Read the Web :: Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
lifesavers_wild_cherry is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
outreach_activities is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
two_meshes is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
indipop is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
panitumumab is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8

robert and samuel are siblings	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
spanish_language is a language taught in language schools in the city valencia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
president_obama is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician hillary_clinton	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
william_howard_taft is a U.S. politician who holds the office of president	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
macneillie is a specific automobile maker dealer in _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4

Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Recently-Learned Facts